CLEVELAND – The ball landed softly in the outfield grass, a quiet spark that ignited an inferno of noise inside Jacobs Field, shooting 44,732 people into a tizzy of hysteria. A former Yankee named Kenny Lofton came dancing across the plate. A despondent pitcher named Luis Vizcaino came trundling off the mound.

On one part of the big scoreboard in left field, they clicked the new score into place and froze it there forever: Indians 2, Yankees 1. Just below that, the clock clicked over to 9:32 p.m. No one inside the frenzied yard seemed to notice, or seemed to care, but the Yankees should have.

Because starting now, they are officially on the clock. Starting now, the Yankees are no longer playing to extend their season, or to salvage what had been such a feel-good baseball ride across the past three months. No, beginning tomorrow night at 6:37 p.m., they are playing for reputations. They are playing for jobs.

“We can’t think of anything else except winning the game in front of us,” Johnny Damon said in the morgue-like stillness of the visitors clubhouse. “We can let everyone else think about what it all means. We just have to focus on each at bat, make the most of what we can.”

Damon is an authority on such matters, having risen out of an 0-2 hole as a Red Sox player against the A’s in 2003 and an 0-3 canyon the following year against the Yankees. There is a scattered group of Yanks who also remember overcoming their own 0-2 chasm against the A’s in 2001.

But little of that history will mean much if the Yankees don’t start hitting, the way none of the superlative baseball they’ve played since the beginning of July will mean anything. The Indians are a terrific team, resilient, with all kinds of Midwestern fight in them. They were always going to be a tough out. Now it’s time for the Yankees to prove they are, too.

If not, the repercussions will resound like an organ in church. It will start with Joe Torre, whose tenure almost assuredly will end if the Yankees can’t find their way back here for a Game 5 on Wednesday. It will extend to all corners of the roster, which seemed so primed for a long October run. And it will bounce back to the feet of Alex Rodriguez, who could have done so much more with his four at-bats last night, who three straight times struck out with men on base, the last time on Fausto Carmona’s 113th and final pitch, waving at ball four with Bobby Abreu sitting on second.

He has to start doing something, because he is dangerously close to sealing himself as one of the smallest October performers of all time, a thread of digits that would sour even the most steel-plated stomachs. He was 0-for-4 last night, is 0-for-6 in this series, is0-for-his-last-19 over all and 4-for-his-last-50. That, friends, is a batting average of .080.

Right now, that is destined for his professional tombstone unless something drastic happens beginning tomorrow night.

“We’ve been in a hole all year,” A-Rod said. “This is nothing new for us.”

In truth it is very new, because every time the Yankees’ season seemed in danger of slipping into quicksand, A-Rod managed to halt the panic with his bat. Now he only seems to make things worse.

It was a lost two-day visit in so many ways, a wasted gem from Andy Pettitte last night the same way a strong showing Thursday against C.C. Sabathia was wasted. The Indians hung around long enough last night until an army of insects did to Joba Chamberlain what the rest of the American League never could.

Nats killed the Mets’ season last week. Gnats tried to kill the Yankees’ season last night. The flying ants didn’t finish the job, not yet. There is still the small matter of eliminating the Yankees, a task that always tests a team’s resolve. And there is the clock, ticking away, clicking away, pounding away, hammering away.

The Yankees better hear it, better respond to it. The consequences for ignoring it are too grisly to ponder.